Friday, September 18, 2009

The Rules of Fiction

I blogged about them on Fresh Fiction.com today. Be one of the first to comment, and win!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Young Adult Novels are Awesome

I've been gorging on young adult novels this summer, researching a pet project. I never read YA as a kid, and had no idea how fantastic and thriving a genre it is. Many of the books listed below are darker than mainstream adult fiction, and they're all a heckofa lot smarter.

Hunger Games (Suzanne Collings)
Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling-- except for those fifty million people, who knew?)
Feed (M. T. Anderson)
Scott Westerfield's Uglies, Pretties, and Specials series
The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier)
A Great and Terrible Beauty (Libba Bray)
House of the Scorpion (Nancy Farmer)

Friday, September 11, 2009

Book Research

I learned today that 10-20 hours before an earthquake, cell phones, radio, and television reception are all intermittently interrupted. Also, one of the guys who tried to kill Rasputin was dressed as a girl by his mother until his early teens. Can you say, "Sleepaway Camp"?

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Locus Review

From September's Locus:

"Sarah Langan is one of the bright new hopes of horror-- an intelligent, literary, ambitious author capable of scaring the ever-loving crap out of her readers."-- Tim Pratt

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Atlantic Monthly Article: "How Health Care Killed My Father"

I know as a writer I'm supposed to blog about writing, but sometimes life on the outside is interesting, too. The above titled article in this month's Atlantic Monthly reminded me, despite its anecdotal, painfully weepy human-interest title, of why the Atlantic is so good. It gives an excellent analysis of the health care system, and I now feel informed enough to have a real opinion, and not be like that weird old guy on my block with the t-shirt that reads, "Single Payer System!" whose shoes are untied.

Article is here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care